Media Storm Launches First Podcast Episode in Partnership with Open Britain

Hosted by award-winning journalists Helena Wadia and Mathilda Mallinson, Media Storm is known for sharp, fearless journalism that cuts through spin, challenges disinformation and asks difficult questions about power and accountability.

The first episode investigates the murky world of dark money and foreign interference in UK politics.

From think tanks and bot farms to political donations and luxury trips for MPs, the episode explores how influence is bought, hidden and normalised inside the British political system - and why governments have repeatedly failed to properly investigate it.

Featuring Conservative Party fundraiser turned whistleblower Sergei Cristo and journalist Sangita Myska, the episode examines Russian state attempts to buy political influence in Britain alongside the wider networks of wealth and power shaping politics behind the scenes.

The episode also offers a first look at Open Britain’s forthcoming report, Russian Interference in British Politics, which will be published in the coming days.

The report highlights a deeply troubling reality: despite repeated warnings from the Intelligence and Security Committee, the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Rycroft Report, successive governments have continued to claim there is “no evidence” of successful foreign interference in British democracy — without ever conducting the full investigation needed to establish the facts.

As the Intelligence and Security Committee’s Russia Report concluded, the Government had “not seen or sought evidence” of successful interference. Not because the threat did not exist, but because the question was never properly asked.

Meanwhile, countries including the United States, France, Germany and Canada have all carried out substantive investigations into foreign political interference. Britain still has not.

Open Britain is calling for a full independent public inquiry into foreign interference in UK politics, stronger democratic safeguards and urgent reforms to close the loopholes that leave British democracy vulnerable in an age of disinformation, dark money and increasingly hostile information warfare.

If you care about who really shapes political power in Britain, this is an episode well worth listening to.

Listen to the episode here.